The ready ability for a business to store, process and to transmit data is a facet of operations that a business relies upon to conduct its day-to-day activities. For businesses that maintain sensitive and confidential information, an inability to protect that data can hurt a business' reputation and bottom line, and expose the business to legal liability. Businesses are therefore taking measures to improve their ability to protect confidential data.
One mechanism that businesses use to protect data is to periodically back up data from online storage to a removable data medium that can be taken off-line and moved to a physically separate location from the system that created the backup. Storing removable data media in a physically separate location from the backup system can protect the data stored thereon from a single destroying event, such as a fire or a flood. To provide additional protection for the data, a business may opt to store that data offsite in a secure tape repository.
While storing data on removable data media in a remote location can protect that data from a single failure event, storage and transportation of the removable data media can expose the removable media to a variety of insecure environments and environments not under the direct control of the business. Such environments include when the data media is transported from one location to another within the business or to an off-site storage location. In addition, the data media may be stored in a variety of locations within the business. Movement and temporary storage of the data media can result in the data media being mislaid or stolen. Such events can happen, in part, because the removable media cannot be adequately tracked by system administration once that removable media is taken to an off-line state.
FIG. 1 is a simplified block diagram of a network system incorporating a removable data media for data storage. Removable data media is accessible to a processor 120 through the use of an autoloader 110. Autoloader 110 houses a set of removable data media 112 (e.g., tape cartridges or optical media). Loading mechanism 114, such as a robotic arm, is used to move a specified removable data media 112 from its storage location in the autoloader to a drive mechanism 116 configured to write and read data to and from the media at the request of processor 120. Autoloader 110 also incorporates a portal 118 that allows a removable media 112 to be removed from the autoloader or to be inserted into the autoloader.
Autoloader 110 is coupled to processor 120 that is configured to transmit and receive data from the autoloader. Processor 120 can include a backup utility module 125 that can manage backups of a variety of data volumes coupled to processor 120 (e.g., directly or indirectly coupled volumes 132 and 134, and network attached storage volumes 142 and 144 coupled to the processor via network 140). Backup utility module 125 can also store information regarding backups that have been performed in a backup data store 150, which can include the identity of a removable data media on which a backup has been stored.
While a removable media 112 is within autoloader 110, that removable data media is available to backup utility module 125 and its location is known. But once a removable data media is removed from the autoloader through portal 118, the backup utility module can no longer automatically track the location of that removable media. In one prior art system, an administrator can access backup utility 125 via a terminal 160 to provide information about the location of a removable data medium, but such information may be out of date by the time that information has been entered (e.g., the data media may have been moved to a new location). Further, requiring an administrator to enter information about where a removable data medium is located consumes administration resources that could otherwise be used more effectively.
It is therefore desirable to have a system that can automatically provide a location of an off-line removable media in order to decrease the burden of entering such information on system administrators as well as improving the security of the removed media.